Clueless ‘SNL’ mocks Tucker Carlson with outdated impression

“Saturday Night Live” (“SNL”) kicked off its most recent season over the weekend, returning to what has become a favorite segment: a sneering impression of ex-Fox News host and conservative commentator Tucker Carlson. The only problem? The impression is about five years out of date.

Tucker doesn’t sound like this anymore, and that matters, for reasons I’ll get into. Here’s a clip.

So in that clip they are focusing on Tucker’s penchant for going after aspects of popular culture and attacking them for forcing a socially liberal and anti-Christian worldview on unsuspecting customers, like when he complained about Bud Lite hiring a transgender woman to advertise the beer, or downplaying the sex appeal of the green M&M. You know, classic Tucker.

But that’s just the point — that’s what Tucker sounded like back in 2021, 2022. Back when he still had his show on Fox News. Now he’s an independent commentator, and a very successful one, but his show has nothing to do with any of that. It’s mostly about Israel’s war on the Palestinians, and how President Trump is failing America by intervening in Iran.

In fact, here was Tucker in a recent interview making an argument that Trump doesn’t care if he gets a lot of people killed because, in the long run, we are all dead.

That’s not a very flattering portrayal of Trump and the right, which, by the way, is perfectly fine — it’s good, even admirable, to change one’s mind about a political figure if you don’t like what they’re doing. Tucker emphasizes some different issues these days, many of which he has in common not with the right but with the left. Here was just the other day giving a monologue on why it was wrong to cancel Macklemore for making statements about atrocities against the Palestinians.

To be clear, I have no problem with any of this. It’s Tucker’s show, he’s welcome to change his mind. I don’t fully agree with him on this, but I think it’s good to question the role of the U.S. in the Middle East, etc.

What I’m really interested in, though, is the fact that so many liberal elites just have no idea that Tucker is no longer that same guy they’re making fun of. I guess it didn’t make it to the “SNL” writer’s room that Tucker is on their same side and echoes many of their same opinions about international affairs, about the bad actions of the state of Israel and so on. Yet again, our elites are out of touch — not just with public opinion, but with basic facts about what important people believe and say. So much for keeping your comedy relevant.

Now this is isn’t the greatest moral failing of all time or anything, but I think it says something about the laziness of mainstream entertainment that even their parodies of conservatives can miss the mark so badly. They just don’t know what the other side is like at all.

Robby Soave is co-host of The Hill’s commentary show “Rising” and a senior editor for Reason Magazine. This column is an edited transcription of his daily commentary.